


Rival

by atamascolily



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Dark, Gen, Mirrors, Multiple Selves, Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-05
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:40:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29718003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: Rey confronts her worst enemy in the Ahch-To cave--herself.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	Rival

_The tide is high, it's sink or swim.  
My only rival is within._  
-Ruelle, "Rival"

 _Followers of the Way, if you want insight into Dharma as is, just don't be taken in by the deluded views of others. Whatever you encounter, either within or without, slay it at once... By not cleaving to things, you freely pass through._  
-[Zen master Linji Yixuan](https://www.dharmanet.org/coursesM/27/zenstory20b.htm)

Rey's first day on Ahch-To is not a rousing success. After heated debate, Master Skywalker retreats into his hut, eager to be rid of his unwelcome visitor. He would slam the door if there was one to slam, but it hangs awkwardly on its hinges where Chewbacca flung it aside, utterly useless as a barrier. He makes do with a curtain flounce instead, which lacks the dramatic effect.

Rey sighs and makes her way down the steep stone steps to where Chewbacca has been working on the endless maintenance needed to keep _Falcon_ flightworthy. He sits by a campfire outside the ship, roasting plucked porg on a spit, and generously offers her a spindly leg and thigh. She accepts without hesitation, nibbling thoughtfully as she picks the bones clean while twin suns set over the ocean.

"No, he won't come with us," she says at last, in answer to her companion's unspoken question. "I'm going to keep trying."

Chewbacca snorts, but doesn't comment further.

Night falls and the sky above them is clear and bright. The stars over Ahch-To are different from the ones Rey knows on Jakku but the feeling she gets when she looks at them is not: tantalizing possibilities, just out of reach.

The sea is louder now, a giant beast breathing in and out in the darkness. The ocean is simultaneously terrifying and fascinating to Rey--so much undrinkable water in a vast wasteland more treacherous than any desert, flinging spray that cools her flesh and stings her eyes if she ventures close.

Too restless to linger by the fire, Rey takes her leave and scrapes out a bed in one of the unoccupied huts in the abandoned village--all the better to ambush Skywalker in the morning. Every stone that makes up the curved wall is deliberately placed, wedged so tightly against its fellows that gravity, not mortar, holds them in place. The overall effect is one of rocks floating in mid-air--a fitting touch for what was once a thriving Jedi village.

Rey's mission to Ahch-To was sanctioned by General Leia Organa herself: the future of the galaxy at stake and the Resistance needs Luke Skywalker's help. As much as Rey seeks her own answers, she can't escape the fact that she's a messenger and a proxy for the bigger issues. This isn't solely about her and never has been. The Jedi are supposed to bring peace and justice, and the fact that Skywalker doesn't see it that way--or doesn't care--is unsettling.

Rey is used to solitude; isolation isn't good or bad, just a fact of life she's come to accept as normal. But tonight she misses Finn and the friendly jostling of so many bodies the Resistance base on D'Qar--the nerve-wracking yet oddly comforting closeness.

Now Rey is light-years away from Finn and her new friends in the Resistance, back to scratching marks on the wall to count the days on this mad quest. With any luck, she won't be here for very long and the final tally will be low, but old habits born of necessity die hard.

Skywalker thinks he can outlast her; he is wrong. If there's one thing Rey is good at, it's waiting. Surviving. Enduring. But she doesn't understand how he thinks or why he's doing this in the first place, which makes her task that much harder. Why did he hide himself on this rocky spire rising from the sea in the first place? Why come _here_ out of all the inhabitable planets in the galaxy?

She sleeps fitfully, and dreams of an open, twisting maw in the earth, pulling her down into the depths. The answers she seeks wait for her there, and she ventures forward to investigate--only to be roused by a raucous chorus of porgs at dawn, squawking as they greet the rising suns.

***

Any thought Rey spares for her dream is forgotten when Kylo Ren shows up unexpectedly in the hut with her. She shoot a hole in his chest with her blaster, which sadly doesn't take because he's not _actually_ there in the flesh, just some weird Force vision she doesn't understand. She succeeds only enrages the locals, who have strong opinions about the resulting hole in the side of the hut--and even stronger ones about the culprit. Then Skywalker announced that he'll train her after all, and whisks her off for her first lesson in the Force.

All in all, a most eventful morning.

It's only when Rey reaches out to sense the life pulsing around her as part of her lesson that she realizes the cave from her dream is a real place, brooding off the eastern tip of the island. Skywalker reacts so badly to the discovery that she keeps her mouth shut about her dream from the night before, along with her encounter with Kylo. The last thing she wants is for Skywalker to balk and refuse to continue her training, and the mere mention of Kylo Ren--his failed student, his lost nephew--would be enough to set him off again.

Her instincts are right. Later, as the suns set, Skywalker tells her the story of his failure with Kylo, how his nephew turned to the dark and destroyed his school--and with it, any hope of a new Jedi Order. Skywalker's failure broke him and he has no desire to start over again, claiming it is futile to try.

"Something inside me has always been there, but now it's awake and I'm afraid," Rey pleads. "I need somebody to show me my place in all of this."

Skywalker turns away towards the setting suns, ignoring Rey's words as well as their unspoken corrollary: _And if you won't help me, I'll find someone who can._

***

Water falling from the sky is novel at first, but quickly loses its appeal once Rey is soaked to skin and shivering in the chilly evening damp. Ahch-To is the complete opposite of the Jakku desert, leaving Rey lost and adrift amidst the strangeness. Only the ruins and decay, that sense of lost grandeur of the past, is the same.

Back in her hut, Rey sulks by a fire, too agitated and annoyed with herself to venture down to the _Falcon_ with her failures again. She's tangled in this story with no clear way out, and Skywalker refuses to help her make sense of it.

Rey isn't important, isn't special. At least, that's what she always thought up until a few weeks ago, when whatever power she bears awoke inside of her. Yes, she always loved the whispered stories of the Jedi, always dreamed of a great destiny of her own--but this was never supposed to be _her_ story, right?

The lightsaber at her belt says otherwise. Skywalker's lightsaber called to her in that dingy basement on Takodana, showed her visions she still doesn't understand. Maz Kanata agees, and Rey trusts that strange little woman with her knowing smile and earnest, unblinking gaze. Maz knows more than she says--more than Rey had time to ask in their brief time together. Maybe Maz will be more forthcoming next time if this whole business with Skywalker doesn't pan out.

First, Rey met Han Solo the pirate. Then his estranged wife, the former princess turned rebel Leia Organa, and now Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi. All three of them are legends out of the past, characters from fantastic stories whose lives have become inextricably tangled in Rey's own. And then there's Kylo Ren, the lost son, the fallen knight who stalks Rey now for his own purposes. She's out of her depths and doesn't belong here. None of this is hers.

And yet--

The whispers from the cave say otherwise. _You have not yet begun to fathom the depths inside you._ _You have the power. You have the strength and the will to claim it._ _The answers you seek can be yours if you seek them out. They linger in the depths, waiting for you._

Skywalker doesn't want her to go there. 

Skywalker doesn't want a lot of things.

Rey looks out through one of the windows in the side of the hut, up the terrace to the retreat Skywalker has claimed for his own. The fabric curtain is tightly drawn, as if to barricade himself from the entire world as tightly as he's severed himself from the Force.

Like Kylo Ren, Skywalker had everything Rey has ever wanted--family, friends, a place in the universe where he belonged--and he cast it aside...for _this_. To sulk on an island in the middle of nowhere, more removed from civilization than Jakku, which at least is on the starcharts, even if it's only frequented by smugglers and traders too down on their luck to afford better options. Ahch-To doesn't even have that.

 _Why do you care what Skywalker thinks?_ a voice whispers in the back of her mind. _He doesn't know what he's doing. He failed with Kylo. He can't be bothered with you. You can do better. You know better. You *are* better._

Whose whispers are she hearing? What stories should she believe? Is this the arrogance of the dark side flattering her ego... or the truth she's reluctant to admit to herself because it scares her?

Then a half-naked Kylo Ren intrudes _again_ , accusing his parents of terrible things and Rey's parents of far worse, in a barrage of insults and insinuations that leave her reeling in stunned betrayal. He claims that Skywalker tried to murder him in his sleep--which is absurd, but at the same time, completely understandable if Kylo was as obnoxious then as he is now.

If Skywalker's rebuffs are irritating, Kylo's smug assurances are unbearable. He thinks he knows everything about Rey, that he can dictate and control her worth. He is wrong, and it galls Rey that she has no firm evidence to counter his claims, just the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that everything out of his mouth is a lie.

But her intuition also believes the proof she needs is contained within the cave. 

" _I need someone to tell me my place in all this_ ," she'd said to Skywalker earlier in the day.

Does she, though?

_Everyone tells me that they know me, but no one does. I want to know who I really am inside--not what other people tell me I should be._

She rises to her feet, her decision made. 

_I will go and see for myself._

***

The rocks are slick and treacherous in the driving rain, the wind blowing streaming sheets of water that she must wade through to reach the edge of the cliff. Her progress is slow and cumbersome, and she is grateful when she crawls far enough underground to shelter her from the worst of the weather. She shivers, soaked to skin by the time she reaches bottom, and scans her surroundings warily for danger. Her breath pluming in front of her in tiny ephemeral clouds in the chilly silence.

She skirts the rim of a deep pool, picking her way among the boulders as she ventures further in. Even as her eyes adjust to the darkness, there's nothing but rocks and water, but she doesn't relax for a moment. Something lurks here, alive and watchful and intelligent, poised to strike. Maybe it was a mistake to leave the lightsaber behind, but it's too late now to do anything about it now.

Rey refuses to be afraid. She's spent her whole life going into dark places that most people avoid--what's one more to the count? Whatever's down here can't be worse than that one wrecked Star Destroyer that nearly blew up in her face back on Jakku. Rey is no stranger to dead spaces and she has no fear of ghosts.

Maybe she should. Because there's one standing before her now--a pale, spindly little thing. Then she realizes it's no ghost, but a reflection, her own image, cast back in an impossible silver mirror before her--

Rey stares. She's never paid much attention to what she looks like--there's never been much point when you live alone in the desert. Mirrors don't last long on Jakku, and vanity is a luxury she's never been able to afford. Rey does her hair by feel and braids it to keep it out of the way and spare herself the labor of combing it. She oils her skin when it cracks and bleeds and changes her close when the smell gets too bad, and that's about it.

But something in her reflection unsettles her now--a distorted fuzziness, as if her entire existence is precarious. Has she always been so thin and wiry, her arms taut with muscles born from necessity and need, her eyes grim from the endless fight for survival? Has she always been so haunted? Is this what Finn and her friends see when they look at her?

Rey frowns, and so does her reflection. Then its expression twists into an angry snarl as it leaps forward, pouncing on an astonished Rey and knocking her to the ground in a furious tangle of all-too-solid arms and limbs.

There is nothing pretty or controlled in its flailing punches and hair-pulling, inelegant but effective moves in a no-holds-barred battle for survival straight out of a Niima Outpost street brawl. Her double's jagged nails claw at her face and Rey fights like her life depends on it, because it does.

A splash underfoot startles her, as they hit the edge of the pool and go down. Rey has just enough time to grab one last precious mouthful of air before the double pulls her under. Neither of them can swim, but it doesn't matter if she can't get back to the surface in time.

Rey kicks frantically but the double won't let go. Her chest burns and she knows that she has seconds left before she inhales and it's all over. No matter how she twists away, she can't break the double's grip. Her survival instincts are screaming at her to keep flailing, but she's fighting _herself_ , and the double knows exactly what she's going to do before she does it. It's not _fair_ \--

So much for answers. She's going to die down here and never know the truth, never know who she really is or why her life has taken such strange and twisted turns--

 _No._ A raw animal stubbornness wells up inside her as she refuses to roll over and accept her fate--just like on Starkiller Base. _I won't let it end like this. I won't let you win. I won't let you beat me--especially when you *are* me--_

She headbutts her double and the other woman lets go long enough for Rey to broach the surface before she's pulled under again. Emboldened, Rey repeats the maneuver, but with no success--she's bought herself a little more time, but in another few seconds, she'll be back to where she started. 

On impulse, Rey stops fighting and lets her body go slack in her double's arms. She is rewarded when the confused double relaxes her grip enough for Rey to lash out with renewed energy. Dragging her opponent in her wake, she hauls them both back onto solid ground like those ridiculous thala-sirens on the beach. 

"Why are you doing this?" Rey hisses, her face jammed against her opponent's ear. She doesn't bother to ask "who are you?" because she already knows the answer.

The double claws for Rey's face. "You're--not--good enough--"

"And you are?" Rey's temper, already frayed to the limits, snaps. " _You're_ the weak one, not me! You have no existence outside of me--nothing but what I give you-- and I--take--it-- _back_!"

And on the last syllable, she grabs the double's shoulders and slams her head against the rocks.

With a sickening crack, the double's body goes limp, her eyes rolling back in her head. She smiles crookedly one last time, a thin trail of blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. "Maybe you're not so weak after all," she whispers--and vanishes.

Rey stares. Was this a trick? Some bizarre test? If so, she'd probably failed; killing herself seemed like it would be against the rules somehow . Even if it wasn't really _her_ , but some sort of crazy vision who attacked her first--

Salt stings in the shallow cuts on Rey's hands and face, and blood drips from a shallow wound across her forehead. Her double is gone, but the wounds she left behind are all too real. Rey looks up at the mirror reflexively to assess the damage--only to discover that now she has no reflection at all.

It's just as well, she decides after a moment, forcing herself to her feet as she wipes the blood out of her eyes. The last thing she needs is another version of herself to fight. One was more than enough.

"So much for answers," she says, turning away from the mirror in disgust.

By the time she emerges from the cave, the storm is over and the sky is clear again. The moon hangs low in the sky, illuminating the rocky landscape with its pale, ghostly light. All is quiet, save for the whistling wind, the distant waves, and a faint cry of some wild creature in the dark.

For the first time she can remember, the nagging voice in the back of her head is silent and the doubts that have always plagued her are gone. She is enough just as she is. She is herself--fully, freely _herself_. She doesn't need anyone to pin her down and define her--she knows who she is, what she is, in a manner that cuts beyond word and language, but simply _is_. Nothing else is necessary. 

"How about that," Rey says softly. "How about that."

Something inside her has always been there. Now it's awake but she is no longer afraid. Whatever lurks in the dark no longer holds any terrors for her.The cave has seen to that. 

Oddly at peace with this night's work, Rey limps back to the hut, and sleeps soundly for what remains of the night. She wakes refreshed and alert when the chorus of porgs rises to greet the new day, still suspended in that deep, abiding calm. 

She could get used to this.


End file.
